BOSTON, MA – May 9, 2016 For the past six months, Erica Walker, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and founder of Noise and the City, has been conducting the Greater Boston Neighborhood Noise Survey, a survey aimed at gauging residents’ behavioural and health responses to noise in their communities. Thanks to overwhelming community support, her work has been featured in press including The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, and The Harvard Gazette. The Greater Boston Neighborhood Noise Report will be available early Fall, 2016.

To put a human face to community noise, Community Sound Portraits—an artistic collaboration between Noise and the City and local artist, Julio Cesar Roman—was developed. The aim of this project is to take a deeper look at the community noise experience—both the positive and the negative—through the lens of actual community residents. We are looking for residents in the Greater Boston Area to interview and photograph in their neighborhood.

A Community Sound Portrait will consist of an interview, an audio recording of community noise, a measure of actual noise levels using state-of-the-art noise monitoring equipment, and artistic photographs of each resident in their neighborhood. These visual and auditory interviews will be featured on Noise and the City’s website and in our upcoming noise report.

We are interested in residents from all walks of life and encourage all who are interested in sharing their thoughts about noise in their community to fill out an application here:

For more information about Community Sound Portraits and/or noiseandthecity.org, please visit www.noiseandthecity.org or contact Erica Walker, Researcher, at Erica@noiseandthecity.org or edw266@mail.harvard.edu. Her phone number is 617-459-3890.